On the way home from the lake yesterday afternoon I stopped by the Colorado Lagoon slime pit in Long Beach to see if our beloved enteromorpha algae opaleye bait has again started growing.  You might remember two weeks ago The Breakwall Angler reported recent rains all but destroyed the substantial growth of the month prior.  YIPPEE, it’s growing again and low tide made it easy to harvest some of the longest, gooiest, stringiest green bait ever.

    I picked up Breakwall Dan at five this morning for a stop at Balboa Jetty in Newport Beach.  Being the early birds we are, we beat the crowds to the finest spot of the entire wall, the outside corner on the end.

    There, I propped my sand spike into a perfect two-inch diameter bore hole in one of the granite boulders and tossed a frozen anchovy anchored by a three-ounce torpedo with my fifteen pound outfit.  Pole placed into spike cup, alarm bell clipped thereto.

    Next the flinging of our Fish Traps ensued.  While that was going on, the bell went off big time.  I bolted over, unclipped the ding-a-linger, and felt for said nibbler.  Not detecting any action after a while, I reeled up a mangled ’chovy that wasn’t munched by a dumb ol’ thornback.  I was thinking sand bass since they have been showing up lately in the daily dock totals.

    I re-baited, tossed out and resumed the Fish Trap, along with Dan.  It didn’t take too long before the bell went off again, this time HOOK-UP!  As I reeled I again could tell it wasn’t a thornback, but then it wasn’t anything too huge either.  Moments later, without much of a struggle (except for the weight sticking in the weeds), up popped the expected sandie taping out at the legal 12 ½ inches, a two-taco keeper.  Cool.

    By now sunrise was upon us, time for the opaleye green bait rig.  Chum Minh put some bait into the rocks to attract the blue-eyed foxies, I tossed out with the bobber enteromorpha rig with my ten-pound-test rig, Dangling the hook seven feet below.

    Dear old Dan recently purchased a new Penn Captiva spinning reel from eBay with eleven ball bearings and a long cast spool.  After an hour of his Fish Trapping with it, he asked if I would like to field test it.  We exchanged rods, I flung it out there, indeed a long cast.  As I reeled in the many bearings provided quite the smooth retrieve, enabling even the most inexperienced angler to feel the slightest of nibbles... exactly like I did.  HOOK-UP!  I easily cranked in another sand bass on the chartreuse Trap, only the sandie was under the 12-inch minimum.  Thanks Dan, it functions well.  Anyway, the trick is to launch the Trap as far as possible, let it hit bottom with the bail open, then reel in with a jerky motion as slow as possible so that it does not get snagged as it swims over the rocks.

    I saw some cane pole guys show up and asked if they have caught any opaleye here lately.  One seemingly knowledgeable dude said yup, two years ago, not too many this year.  Same as Palos Verdes, I retorted.  I asked if he like me was going for opaleye today, he said yessir, but changed his mind after he saw the sand bass action earlier.  Goodie, more for us.

    It took a while and several nibbles but finally my bobber went down and I was connected to something nice.  With the light line the drag went out and I was screaming for the net.  Big Dan sacrificed his current cast to deliver as I yelled, it’s three pounds!  I played it back and forth at my feet until I detected it was tuckered out enough to dip the net and let the next of the day’s small swell guide it into the mesh.  As I lifted it the crowd sighed as it look fairly large, at least twice as big as the legal sand bass.  There it is, I announced proudly, as I hung the toad opaleye on my Normark 50-lb electronic scale.  I’ll be a cancerous bottom feeder, it only registered in at 1-10, even though each spectator in the gallery shouted out 2-0.  Maybe the 9-V battery is deficient.

    A little bit later Dan hooked up with his green-bait rig.  He bounced an opaleye of two tacos up onto the rocks.  Kind of smallish, it was a borderline keeper but worth a meal anyway, so it was slid into the gunnysack.

    With today’s breezy high overcast, one would think the bite would last longer than 08:30.  Wrong.  The two of us fished hard as did something like 20 other Danglers with not much but a mackerel being landed by a cute girl fishing with her Dad from the end inside corner.  Dan and I packed up to move to a spot on the outside closer in where there was some kelp.  Nothing on either anchovies, green bait or Fish Traps.

    Wait a minute, there was one stealthy hombre flylining a dead anchovy in and out of the rocks from ½ to ¾ the way out.  Finally he came up to his staging rock with a two-pound class calico bass.  I said nice catch, then he proceeded to swig heavily off his Bud 40 and give me two pretty good tips about fishing this jetty which as I pondered made much sense.  In lieu of spilling fish guts at this time I will plan a trip there for high tide in two weeks and report back with the results of his techniques.

    Upon arriving home I hung a 2 ½ pound dumbbell weight on my Normark scale.  It registered 2-5 instead of 2-8, so I will prorate today’s big opaleye at 1-13, three ounces short of two pounds.  I hung a 10 pound weight; it came in at 9-10, five pound weight at 4-5 with a new battery.  When I bought it 15 years ago it was right on.  Time for a new scale.

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